Their marketing expense last year was less than half of the Microsoft budget and only a third of the Samsung budget. Outside of technology companies, Coca-Cola is one of the big spenders with a budget three times that of Apple. Putting it another way, Apple spends less than one per cent of their total sales on advertising whereas other similar companies spend anywhere from two to three per cent of their sales.

What Apple do so effectively is get people to talk about their products.

This week was no different. The annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is currently in full swing in San Jose and the keynote address was used to make announcements that would generate even more publicity for Apple across the world.

Far be it for me to buck the trend so here is yet another article mentioning these new announcements!

The announcement that seems to have sparked the most interest was the HomePod. This is the first new product line from Apple for many years and was significant in that it was Apple following rather than leading.

The Amazon Echo was released on 6 November 2014 and the Google Home hit the market on 4 November last year. Apple are not accustomed to being last to market – so their product needs to be significantly better than the competitors.

The HomePod can be activated with “Hey Siri” and once awakened, you can then ask your HomePod to play music or turn on your lights or unlock your doors (assuming you have HomeKit-compatible lights and locks).

You can ask for weather information or the latest news or, in some cities, even traffic data. This all sounds familiar but where Apple believe they have created a point of difference is with their audio quality.

There are six microphones so it can pick up your voice from any direction and the seven beam-forming tweeter array; precision acoustic hours and directional control (don’t worry – all of that means nothing to me either) results in a seven-inch tall speaker that sounds great.

The two iPad Pro models have given extra life to the struggling Tablet market so it was no surprise that a new Pro was announced. No change was made to the 12.9” model but the 9.7” version has been replaced with a 10.5”.

That increase sounds like it would make the model physically a lot larger but, with a smaller bezel, the increase in size is only 10mm in height and 5mm in width. With a faster processor; better screen resolution; more memory and a better camera, this upgrade is much more than just a larger screen.

Apple announced the new iMac Pro is packed with enough hardware to make it the most powerful Mac computer to date. Sounds good, but then I would hardly expect any company to release new technology and announce that it was less powerful than previous models.

It is hard to see that happening for a start, but if it did then I hardly see any company boasting about it.

That power comes at a price though – US$5,000 for the base model. The 18-core Xeon processor and the price tag will mean that the traditional graphics users will be the main ones excited by this announcement.

Throw in an announcement of two new operating systems – iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 and Apple have again delivered what the Apple faithful wanted.

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